Generative Game Design, Part 1: Game (Surface Structure)
How to communicate game design and create player resonance
A framework for designing games inspired by Leonard Bernstein’s Harvard lecture series The Unanswered Question and transformational grammar. Bernstein is a conductor, composer, and much more, whose most famous work is songwriting for West Side Story.
Part 1: Game (Surface Structure)
Part 2: Attributes
Part 3: Mechanics
Part 4: Prose (Deep Structure)
Part 5: Applications
Introduction
The premise of Bernstein’s lecture series, The Unanswered Question, is teaching music theory through the lens of transformational grammar. It’s the simple idea based on the fact that most of music has been created from a discrete set of notes, just like how most English literature has been created from a discrete set of sounds like th- or a-. Then through transformational functions, they turn into the songs and prose that enrich our lives. This framework is applying this same logic to games. Generative game design is based on defining what the basic elements of game design are, similar to notes and sounds, and describing the functions by which these basic elements transform again and again into our intended player experience.
Using Bernstein’s layers as a guide, generative game design takes the perspective that all games can be understood within the following 4 layers:
1. Game (Surface Structure) — the sensory form in which the game is experienced
2. Prose (Deep Structure) — the underlying structure that configures player behavior
3. Mechanics (Underlying strings) — the smallest units that have meaning
4. Attributes (Chosen elements) — a discrete unit that distinguishes one interaction from another
Game (Surface Structure)
At the top layer, the surface deals with the perceivable elements through (primarily) sight, sound, and touch. A quick example is themed chess sets. As a chess set, the underlying mechanics are all the same. What’s changed is on the surface. If you have a fantasy-themed set, you might be commanding dragons or wizards, compared to maybe space marines with a sci-fi theme. It might not fundamentally change the player’s behavior, but it has a strong influence on shaping their experience. In the surface, we primarily operate within 2 contexts.
The first context is how to communicate the layers underneath, as accurately or as obscurely as intended. Take, for instance, the crosshairs in a first person shooter like Counter-Strike. I think we can all agree that when we use something like a laser-tag gun in real life, (1) we don’t have a convenient indication of where it’s aiming. We would need to use the sights on the gun. (2) Its aim is not directly tied to where we look. We would have to move our hands in conjunction with our heads for that to happen. (3) We don’t have the benefit of aiming perfectly centered where we’re looking. Crosshairs are a figment of the game’s surface structure to signal where you are aiming.
To further this point, crosshairs also indicate how “accurate” the gun will fire as well. The wider they are spread apart, the less accurate we assume the bullets will be. However, in shooters like Counter-Strike in particular, these are set, deterministic patterns and are not randomized like in many other games. In fact, there are websites that showcase exactly what the spray patterns are for every gun. This is an example of how this first context in surface structure is not to communicate accurately but to cater to an intentional experience.
The second context is how to create resonance with the player. This has to do with how players feel emotionally connected to the game’s experience. There is a great of example of this in the “The Psychology of Video Games” podcast episode about loss aversion (~48:30).
In this example, the base game idea is that the player is an adventurer who goes into a cave to gather as much treasure as possible before the cave collapses. As noted in the podcast, it can act as a measuring stick for how “greedy” a player is: how much are they willing to risk for a “monetary” gain.
However, there is a proposal for a re-theming of this game idea. What if all the mechanics stay the same, but, instead of being an adventurer seeking treasure, the player is a firefighter saving animals from a burning building? How does this shape player behavior, by swapping “greed” for “heroism”?
It turns out that, as explained in the podcast, there has been a researcher who has performed this experiment. What they have found is that players stayed in longer with the firefighter version compared to the adventurer version. This might have been what you have expected since heroism as a trait is seen as more socially desirable than greed. But what is intriguing is that with each successive play, players across the different versions eventually stayed in for about the same amount of time.
Paraphrasing what has been said on the podcast: all the emotion that players initially connected with in the game go away. And, in terms of generative game design, what is left? The deep structure of the game that truly configures how much time players will stay in the cave or burning building.
The surface structure deals in forms and metaphors and is primarily concerned with two contexts: how to communicate underlying layers and how to create resonance with the player. It focuses on the direct, outward experience that is projected by the game. But great themes and metaphors are only a piece of the design. To find out how we can design for player behavior, in the next part, we will dive into the bottom-most layer, attributes, and build back up to mechanics then deep structure where we can address this.
This continues in Part 2: Attributes. You can find me on Twitter @stephentrinha.
